Half Moon Run releases new single “Alco” and details on upcoming album Salt
There’s nothing quite like waking up to a new song and video from your favourite band, and that is precisely how I got to wake up on April 20th! Montreal-based indie-rock band Half Moon Run just released their second single, “Alco,” from their upcoming album. The song combines an unearthed 2012 ukulele riff and new recordings the band did last year.
Conner Molander of the band explains,
“Devon took a ukulele on a trip to Thailand in 2012. When he got back to Montreal, he played the opening riff of ‘Alco’ for us – and we loved it! We started developing the song around that time, but kept running into roadblocks with the arrangement. It’s such a pleasure now to feel like we finally cracked the code after all these years. Personally I love the elven textures that decorate this recording – it feels mystical!”
With a distinct style of harmonies and the use of instruments outside of a conventional three-piece rock band, Half Moon Run’s music truly stands apart from others.
Also announced this morning were more details on the new album titled Salt, which is set to release on June 2nd. Every time the band writes together, they use a Tascam 2-track recorder that they bought for their first European tour in 2012. They are constantly recording while they improvise and jam and work out songs together – looking for ways to improve.
Conner speaks of the upcoming album,
“On Salt, there’s a track called ‘9beat.’ For that song alone, Devon went through several hundred different Tascam recordings, mining for lyrical and melodic content. We’ve been working on that song for the better part of a decade, and that’s true of several songs on this record – ‘Alco,’ ‘Hotel in Memphis,’ ‘Dodge the Rubble,’ ‘Salt’… There’s also brand new material, written during the pandemic, like ‘Gigafire,’ and ‘Goodbye Cali.’ This record represents a broad, sweeping scope of output from different eras of this band.”
Salt uses ideas and recordings from the past decade and was mostly created at producer Connor Seidel’s Treehouse Studio – North of Montreal.
“While making this record, it felt as if we were boiling down a huge cauldron of musical ideas, trying to reduce it to something elemental. What we were left with was Salt,” says Conner.